Give priority berthing to coastal ships: Centre to ports

The Centre has asked major ports to give priority berthing to ships that operate on the coastal trade – carrying goods from one Indian port to another – in a bid to give a boost to coastal shipping.

The Shipping Ministry has asked the ports to come out with guidelines within a month, according to sources.

The Ministry said vessels shall not be liable to pay priority berthing charges.

Major ports will work out the time limit within which a vessel will be berthed in a port. This may differ depending on the cargo and berth. Each major port should carry out a detailed exercise and issue a trade notice clearly indicating the upper time limit within which a vessel will be given a berth.

As regards priority berthing through a specific window to container vessels, major ports should discuss with the private operators and publish the specific window.

All major ports have been asked to notify provisions for priority berthing and Scales of Rates within a month, sources said.

Chennai port’s chairman Atulya Misra said there would not be any issue in implementing this. At the Kamarajar port, the berths are operated by private operators and the port will work with them on this, a senior official said.

But according to SN Srikanth, Senior Partner, Hauer Associates, Maritime Consultants, this initiative will not lead to any quantum leap in the volume of coastal cargo moved..

India has a coastline of around 7,500 km with nearly 200 ports. But barely 8 per cent of the total domestic cargo (on a tonne-km basis) is moved by coastal shipping. Much of this movement is of bulk cargo such as POL and coal, according to CII Institute of Logistics.

The Indian coastal fleet as on December 31, 2012, comprised 118 cargo carrying vessel with a total dead weight tonne of 0.671 million and 33 passenger-cum-cargo vessels with a total DWT of 27,300.

The reasons for poor utilisation of coastal waterways include high costs at major ports, shallow berths at non-major ports, a multiplicity of non-tariff barriers, inadequate road and rail connectivity to ports and impediments to import and operation of ships , the institute said in a report in association with Hauer.

K Ravichandran, Senior Vice-President and Co-Head, Corporate Ratings, ICRA, said despite several advantages, including being eco-friendly and cost effective, coastal shipping has not been able to realise its full potential due to bottlenecks such as availability of berthing slots at major ports at the right time.

As the handling rates and vessel-related charges are not remunerative for the ports as compared to cross trade vessels, in general, low priority is given to coastal vessels. Thus, the consequent delays in loading and unloading of cargo discourages users.